Recreate config.php file for phpbb forum board Tutorial

It is always a good practice to backup your phpbb program folder and database regularly to avoid things like loosing any important files or data, such as the config.php file that contains the database connection info for your phpbb board, loosing this file basically takes down your phpbb board entirely because your phpbb program does not have the necessary connection info to access the database to process the forum web pages.

Luckily, recreating the config.php file is not that difficult, there are two options for you, one is through the dbinformer.php file that is found in the contrib folder in your phpbb program, the other method is to manually create the file with the basic settings.

recreating config.php using dbinformer.php
In the php installation process, it is advised to remove the install and contrib folder after the installation, because these two folders are no longer needed after the installation and may impose security risks to your phpbb forum if the two folders are being accessed by hackers.

Since the contrib folder has been removed in your live phpbb forum program folder, you can still obtain the dbinformer.php file from the phpbb Full package compressed file :-

1.download phpbb Full package
2.extract the compressed file and upload the contrib folder to your hosting account, place it in the phpbb root folder

3.enter http://yourdomain.com/phpbb/contrib/dbinformer.php in your browser window

4.enter the database access information (database name, user, password etc.) as requested in the screen

5.checked the box Generate config file and hit Submit

6.copy the generated code and save it to a file named config.php

7.Upload the new config.php file to your hosting account, place it in the phpbb root folder

8.Test accessing your forum again

Manually recreate config.php file
Manually recreating config.php requires the connection string format phpbb is using, if you have another phpbb forum, you can copy the config.php file over and manually change the information in it for connecting to the mysql database of this current phpbb forum, the config file content should look like :-

Below explain each of the options and what are the values available for each of the settings :-

$dbms

◦MySQL 3.x – ‘mysql’
◦MySQL 4.x and MySQL 5.x = ‘mysql4′
◦postgres = ‘postgres7′
◦MSSQL = ‘mssql’
◦MSSQL ODBC = ‘mssql-odbc’
◦oracle = ‘oracle’
◦msaccess = ‘msaccess’

If you are not sure what type of database you are using for you phpbb forum, login to your hosting account control panel, and you will see the database name and current version of your hosting account, or if you are still not sure, send a support ticket to your web hosting provider to check on it for you.

$dbhost

Depending on where you are hosting your phpbb database, if it is in the same server as your phpbb program, then enter localhost, otherwise enter the domain name or IP address of your remote server where you are hosting your pphbb database.

$dbname

This is the name of the database you have created to contain phpbb data, if you are hosting on a cpanel server, the format is usually username_dbname, you can login to your hosting account control panel, click into the SQLDB option and the databases, database username, you have created and assigned will be listed.

$dbuser

This is the database user name you have created and given access to the database entered in the $dbname above. The format is username_dbusr if you are on a typical cpanel hosting.

$dbpasswd

Pretty straight forward, the password you have set for the $dbuser above.

$table_prefix

This is the prefix you have given for phpbb table names creation during the installation process, this has to be a match with your current table names, otherwise phpbb program will not be able to locate tables in your database even you have entered the correct database login info above, if you have left this as default during installation, then enter phpbb_, you can double confirm this by login to hosting account, click into SQLdb option, click on phpMyAdmin option at the bottom of the screen, and select the phpbb database, phpMyAdmin will list out the tables available in the database, see if there is any prefix to the table names.

define

This indicates that this phpbb forum is installed (’TRUE’) and should not be redirected to an install process, basically used by phpbb program internally to determine the state of your phpbb forum, no need to change anything and just leave it as it is in the config.php file.

After complete filling in the config.php file, save it and upload to the hosting account, place the file in phpbb root folder. You can now test accessing your forum.

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phpBB CHMOD file folder permissions to set proper file and folder permissions Tutorial

CHMOD is a Linux command for setting file and folder permissions, it is important to set proper file and folder permissions for your phpbb board to avoid important files and data being exploited causing lost of the entire forum. Below list the files and folder in your phpbb forum and the permission level that should be set for each of them :-

•config.php: 666 before install, reset it back to 644 after install

•cache folder: 777

•images/avatars folder: 777

•all the other folders: 755

•all other files: 644

Note: above settings are suitable for servers where php is installed as an apache mod, without the phpsuexec installed. Where the userid executing all the php scripts is the userid that started the apache service. phpsuexec is an apache mod that will run php scripts using individual userids, minimizing the security issues and further tighten the security. There are however pros and cons of running phpsuexec and certain web hosting provider is not setting it as default install on servers.

If you are unsure of your current hosting server setup, you should check with your web host, or simply create a php script with the following code in it, call it on browser to check :-

After calling the script in browser, locate the Server API , if it says Apache then you do not have phpsuexec installed, if it says CGI then you server has php running with phpsuexec.

Tutorial: Converting a phpBB forum into an RSS feed using Python.

RSS/Atom feeds are taking over the web – people like to keep up to date with the latest news, events, and ramblings, but they want to do so from a familiar, quick loading environment. A feed is just a page of dynamically generated content, in a markup form that a feed reader (which you use to read these feeds) can interperet. To generate your own RSS feed, you either need some form of feed generating program, or knowledge of some kind of programming language which has parsing/regular expression capabilities. Python is such an example of such a language, and this tutorial will show you how to make an RSS feed from any phpBB forum page using it.

First things first: We need to import the modules we will need to download a phpBB page, search for certain patterns, and spit the page back out in an XML format: urllib (a high level wrapper around socket and other modules, specifically for downloading over the net) and re (regular expressions)

#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib, re
# phpbb2rss.py – convert a phpBB board into an RSS feed
Then we need to send out a header to the web browser or rss reader, telling it what type of content we’re going to send over the net.

print “Content-Type: application/rss+xml”
print # blank line
Now we need to set up a few variables which we will use later on. The page we want to convert to a feed; the page title; the page description.

phpbb_page = “http://programmers-corner.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=11″
phpbb_pagetitle = “Python”
phpbb_pagedescr = “Python – Programmer’s Corner Python Support”
We need to start setting up the rss page next. We’ll store the following required information in a variable named rss:

rss = “”"

“”" + phpbb_page + “”"
“”" + phpbb_pagedescr + “”"
“”"
Now it starts to get tricker. We need to set up a regular expression to match links on the forum page that we know will point to topics. View the source of a phpBB forum page, and you’ll see that whenever there is a topic, its given to the browser as a link with the class “topictitle”. So we’re going to look for this:

reg = re.compile(”.+?“)
This basically says “compile a new expression into a regular expression object. This will match any piece of text that contains the characters , then 1 or more characters of anything, followed by the characters “. We then need to download the page with the url that was specified. We’re going to use urllib to do this.

page = urllib.urlopen(phpbb_page)
Now we want to get the domain name of the website the forum is residing on. To do so, we use a little regular expression trickery on the forum url we received.

phpbb_url = re.sub(”viewforum.php.+?$”, “”, phpbb_page)
This is translated as “set the variable phpbb_url to the value of phpbb_page with all occurences of viewforum.php, followed by one or more occurance of anything up to the end of the string (signified by a dollar symbol), with nothing”

We have pretty much all the data we need, so we just need to loop through all the lines in the webpage we downloaded, look for our regular expression ‘reg’, and then extract the href part of the anchor tag and append it to our rss code, along with what we find in between the a tags.

for line in page.readlines():
# print “Finding regexp…”
if(reg.findall(line)):
url = reg.findall(line)[0]
title = url
url = re.sub(”<a href="", "", url)
url = re.sub("".+$", "", url)

title = re.sub("“, “”, title)
title = re.sub(”$”, “”, title)
rss += ” n”
rss += ” n”
rss += ” ” + phpbb_url + url + “n”
rss += ” n”
We just extract the values we need from the line we’re scanning if we find a match to our regular expression ‘reg’, and appending them to the rss variable, with the proper tags specified (item, title and link).

Finally, we just close up some tags in our rss variable, and send it to stdout.

rss += ” n”
rss += “”
print rss
If you couldn’t really care about making this program and are just happy that someone else has, you can used a slightly modified version utilizing mod_python which passes the page name and title (and optionally description) through the url. http:/⁄ceruleanwave.dotmod.net/phpbb2rss.py?p=&t=

For example, http:/⁄ceruleanwave.dotmod.net/phpbb2rss.py?p=http://www.programmers-corner.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=11&t=Python

I would put up a nice form for generating the feed, but as my host is moving datacenters _again_, I can’t at the moment.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Full source below.

#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib, re, string

“”"
Convert an PHPBB forum page into an RSS feed.
“”"

print “Content-Type: application/rss+xml”
print

#
phpbb_page = “http://programmers-corner.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=1″
phpbb_pagetitle = “The Lounge”
phpbb_pagedescr = “The Lounge – discuss coding or anything else you want”
#

rss = “”"

“”" + phpbb_page + “”"
“”" + phpbb_pagedescr + “”"

“”"
reg = re.compile(”.+?“)
page = urllib.urlopen(phpbb_page)
phpbb_url = re.sub(”viewforum.php.+?$”, “”, phpbb_page)
for line in page.readlines():
# print “Finding regexp…”
if(reg.findall(line)):
url = reg.findall(line)[0]
title = url
url = re.sub(”<a href="", "", url)
url = re.sub("".+$", "", url)

title = re.sub("“, “”, title)
title = re.sub(”$”, “”, title)
rss += ” n”
rss += ” n”
rss += ” ” + phpbb_url + url + “n”
rss += ” n”
rss += ” n”
rss += “”
print rss

phpBB install local language pack in your phpbb forum Tutorial

Want to have a local language forum board ? no problem ! phpbb is a popular forum board software and there are complete sets of language packs for you to localize your forum board, and installing a language pack is simple too, just follow steps below :-

1.download the language pack of your choice and uncompress it

2.upload the expanded folder tree to your hosting account, place the entire folder into the language folder in your phpbb forum folder

3.login to your phpbb administration panel, under the general setting, set the default language of your board to your local language
4.Your phpbb is ready to speak your local language now.
Note: If you are not seeing the default language change to the local language just set when visiting the forum, try clear your PC cookies and revisit the forum again, there may be personal settings in the cookies saved in your PC that is interfering the change.

Please note that installing these language pack changes all the standard text displayed in phpbb (i.e. menu item, navigation descriptions, help text etc.), if you are using a custom style, you may need to make some changes to the image buttons or any other custom text in the style template to reflect the local language.

phpBB3: Open Source Forum Software Evolved phpbb forum

The 13th of December, 2007 marked the beginning of another chapter of the success story that is open source software, as phpBB version 3 was released. phpBB, an open source bulletin board system, was created by James Atkinson in 2000 as a forum solution for his wife. From its low-key beginnings, phpBB has gone from strength to strength, earning itself a reputation as one of the “killer apps” for the PHP scripting language.

The bulletin board concept dates back to the 1980s, when the earliest forms took shape as newsgroups and primitive dial-up message boards. With the introduction of the Web, bulletin boards, now commonly known as internet forums, have become incredibly user friendly and customisable, and have played a key role in the current social networking trend. It should therefore come as no surprise that on the Internet today there are many millions of active forums, a significant number of which are phpBB installations.

phpBB was first released in April 2002, and has enjoyed constant evolution by an active developer community. In May 2007, the first of eight release candidates was made available to the public. The release candidate stage was lengthy, but ensured that the official release, phpBB v3.0.0, was of a very high standard.

Changes Between phpBB2 and phpBB3

To many people, phpBB2 will be remembered for its revolutionary theme, subSilver, whose combination of simple and slick allowed for a very attractive default theme. Considering it’s now nearly five years old, the design of the subSilver theme still holds up pretty well.

Change is inevitable, though, and perhaps the most noticeable difference that a user sees when comparing a forum that uses phpBB2 to one that uses phpBB3 will be the front-end code used by the board — especially if you dive under the hood. While the colour schemes between the new proSilver theme and subSilver are quite similar, proSilver has quite noticeably distanced itself from a table-based layout. Many people will be pleased to know that the new style is CSS driven, and is XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant. Tables have only been used when appropriate, for instance, in the display of tabular data such as statistics and the member list.

phpBB3 (codenamed Olympus) also includes many features requested by the phpBB community. Features that were only available as modifications in phpBB2 are now available as standard functionality.

Some of the more popular additions include those relating to:

•file attachments
•user and moderator control panels
•the ability to add unlimited layers of forums (subforums)

From an administrative perspective, the largest change comes in the permissions system. While the administration control panel has been completely revamped (it now uses a truly modular system), getting your head around the new permissions system is perhaps the most difficult part of upgrading. The new permission system allows for finer, more granular permission assignment, as well as many new permissions that administrators are able to assign. For easier management, permission roles are included, as is the ability to copy and transfer permissions from other forums. An in-depth overview of the new permissions system forms part of the phpBB documentation.

Notably absent from phpBB3 is an inbuilt modification (MOD) installer. However, as was the case with phpBB2, an official add-on will be published by the phpBB MOD Team for performing automatic MOD installations. Codenamed Blinky, the MOD installer is a modular addition to the administration control panel, which adds a new MODs tab to the administration navigation.

When installing a modification, the MOD installer will read and parse an XML file, storing information about the desired MOD to be installed. Various actions are performed on the basis of this XML file, such as adding, replacing, and removing code. This MOD installer is still under development, but the development team behind Blinky hopes to have something released soon.

The image below shows the details of the MOD installation, which only appear if enabled by the administrator, or if an error occurred.

Below, we see the flexibility in the MOD Manager. The code has three different methods to handle files, including FTP and the creation of a compressed archive.

Reinstall new clean phpbb and use back existing database

Reinstall new clean phpbb and use back existing database

NOTE: you should make sure you are reinstalling the same version as your current phpbb forum version, otherwise you may risk loosing your database or data, as different phpbb version may introduce new changes to the database schema.

Backup database and phpbb folder

Before doing anything, backup your database and phpbb program folder, disable the forum board while you are working on this reinstallation to ensure there is no new data not captured in the backup.

Prepare phpbb files

1.create a new empty mysql database (this is for temporary keeping the empty tables created in this installation)

2.rename the current phpbb program folder in your hosting account to another name

3.Download phpbb core program files that is the exact version of your current phpbb forum.

4.uncompress the file and upload expanded folder to your hosting account, name it to the phpbb program folder you have been using.

5.enter http://www.yourdomain.com/phpbb/install/install.php to begin the installation

6.Follow the settings you have set in the old phpbb forum, BUT enter the newly created database name in the installation process, this is IMPORTANT otherwise you will mess up your phpbb database

7.Follow the installation process exactly like installing a new phpbb board till you have the board setup

8.install all MODs you have in the old phpbb forum, REMEMBER only install the exact same version otherwise you risk loosing your database

9.install style or language pack if you have those in your old phpbb forum

10.ensure everything are setup identical to the old phpbb forum board

11.When you have everything setup, copy the phpbb/images/avatars folder from old phpbb folder to your new phpbb folder, this folder contains forum user uploaded avatars

12.copy the config.php from old phpbb folder back to the new phpbb folder

13.You have now reinstalled your phpbb forum, you can delete the mysql database that was created temporary for this reinstallation.
After the reinstallation and your board is free from error while retrieving data from your database, you should check if there is any new updates for your current phpbb version, if there is, update your phpbb forum to ensure your board is up to date.

Build a phpBB Forum in 5 Steps on Your Web servers by yourself

If you’re thinking of setting up a forum for your Website, you need not start from scratch. The open-source script, phpBB, can easily be installed on most Web servers. This article will describe how to do it right, from downloading through to customisation.

To use this tutorial, you need not know anything about PHP, and need only have had minimum experience with databases.

Introduction to phpBB

phpBB is a stable, open-source, bulletin board script available as a free download from phpbb.com. It allows you to set up an unlimited number of forums and categories. Users, moderators and user groups with varying permissions can be created. In short, it provides everything you’d expect of a bulletin board service. For a complete list of all supported features, see phpbb.com/features.

This software can easily be installed using FTP and a browser. It will run on any PHP-enabled server and requires any one of the following databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL or Access via ODBC.

It doesn’t matter whether your server is running IIS or Apache, though setup tends to be simpler on an Apache Web server. Any Website administrator should be able to install and configure phpBB in a minimum amount of time.

The administrator’s interface allows for ongoing maintenance, so that styles can be changed and topics added or removed. In fact, any administrative duties can be easily performed.

The installation instructions provided at the phpBB site are clear and straightforward. This article does not attempt to replace those instructions but to supplement them and to assist site administrators who are not familiar with PHP. It will help you determine whether you can run phpBB on your server, and if so, how to upload, install and configure it.

System Requirements
As phpBB is written using the server-side scripting language PHP, you need to know whether your Web server supports this language.

If you don’t know the answer to this question, you can always ask your Web host, or upload the following script to your server.

Use any text editor to create this file and save it as info.php. The actual name of the file is not as important as the extension, .php. In text mode, upload this file to the root directory on your server. View it by typing the address into your browser.

If your server does not support PHP, all you will see are the three lines of code shown above. In this case, get in touch with your Web host and see if PHP can be enabled for your domain.

If PHP is installed, the configuration settings of PHP will be displayed. Assuming that you have PHP enabled on your server, the info.php file will also be useful to help determine if you have the database support needed by phpBB.

Confirming database support for phpBB varies slightly depending upon the Web server you’re running. Let’s first look at Web servers that use Apache.

Apache/Linux
Most versions of PHP on Apache are compiled with support for MySQL databases. You can confirm this by looking again at the “info.php” file. The third line of this file should be the Configure Command. In this line, look for the words with-mysql.

PostgreSQL is not as widely supported, but you should be able to discover whether your server supports it in exactly the same way, but instead, looking for with-pgsql.

IIS/Windows
There will be no Configure Command available when PHP is run on a Windows platform, so we’ll take a slightly different approach to confirm database support here. Again viewing the info.php file, choose Find from your browser’s menu options and search for your database type.

For instance, if we searched for mssql to confirm support for MS SQL Server, we should see something similar to the text below:

In the same way, you can test for PostgreSQL using the search string pgsql, for MySQL using mysql, and for ODBC support using odbc.

Use the info.php file to determine which version of the database you have. You’ll need to know this when we begin the installation, and, with database and PHP support confirmed, we can now begin that process.

Upload The phpBB Files
Assuming you’ve downloaded and decompressed the files for phpBB, everything you need to upload should be in the directory called phpBB2. The only real requirement is that the directory structure be preserved.

Use your favourite FTP program to upload the files to your server. Make sure that all non-graphic files are transferred in ASCII mode. Most FTP programmes will do this automatically for you, based on the file extensions. Make sure your software is configured to transfer all files with the extensions .php, .tpl, .inc, .htm and .cfg as text files.

After the upload is complete, change the permissions on the config.php file so that they’re writeable by all. If you don’t know how to do this, don’t worry about it. The program will give you the option of saving a new config.php file and then overwriting the original.

Prepare for Installation
In preparation for setting up phpBB on your server, you’ll need the following information:

•Database Server Hostname/DSN
•Database Name
•Database Username
•Database Password
•Admin Email Address

Let’s discuss this information before we proceed. The host name will be the domain name at which your database is hosted. If your database is hosted on the same server as your Web server, all you need enter here is localhost. If it resides on another server, you can enter the appropriate domain name or the IP address. If instead you’re using ODBC to connect, you will need the connection name. If you are unsure about your situation, clarify the specifics with your Web host.

The database name is, quite simply, the name of the database you’re planning to use. You may use an existing database or create a new one. To create a new database, you may again need to speak with your Web host. If you’re using MySQL with phpMyAdmin, then it’s a relatively simple matter. If you’re using an existing database, table names will be created with a distinctive prefix so that the phpBB tables are readily identifiable.

The username and password need no explanation. The admin email is the email address to which you want questions relating to your bulletin board to be sent.

Installation
With all the information at hand, installation is as simple as pointing your browser towards the install.php file. If you uploaded the directory phpBB2 and its contents to the root directory of your server, the path you need is http://www./phpBB2/install/install.php.

Fill in the text boxes and press the Start Install button. Within seconds you should be finished — installation really is that simple. All the necessary database tables have been created for you. If you wish, have a look at them. There should be a total of 29 new tables — and we haven’t even had to think about SQL!

Shut down your browser, and don’t forget to delete the directories called contrib and install. phpBB won’t run until you do so. If, during the installation, you were asked to download the “config.php” file, you must now upload it to the phpBB2 directory, overwriting the existing file.

Administer Your Forum
To administer your Bulletin Board open http://www./phpBB2/index.php in your browser, and log in with the administrator name and password that you specified on installation. Then, click the Go to Administration Panel link at the bottom of the page. You’ll probably want to go to Forum Admin > Management first, to set up a new forum and categories.

Styles Admin is probably the next area you’ll want to look at, but before you do, go to the phpBB site and see what other styles you might like to download. Upon installation, the phpBB default style, subSilver, is the only one available, but any number of styles may be installed.

After downloading them from the phpBB site, you need to upload your new styles to the Templates directory, which is directly below the phpBB2 directory. After this, new styles must be installed from the Administration panel by going to Styles Admin > Add.

Once you’ve found a theme you like, you can further customise it from the administration panel by choosing Style Admin > Management > Edit. You can associate a theme with an entirely new Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), or you can edit the existing one.

Customise Your Forum
Once you’ve settled on a style, you will doubtless want to further customise it in ways that aren’t available through the Administration panel. For instance, you might want to display your own logo, rather than the phpBB logo.

If you have some knowledge of HTML, minor changes like this are not too difficult. Any changes you wish to make to the appearance of the header can be addressed by making changes to the file called overall_header.tpl. Since this file is included for every page within a style, your changes will take effect throughout the whole bulletin board.

Some other changes can be relatively easy to make. For instance, if it doesn’t make sense to have user groups, the appropriate code can simply be commented out of the overall_header.tpl file.

Be aware that phpBB allows users to choose their own styles, so, unless you choose to override the user’s choice of style from the general configuration menu, any installed templates will be available for users to choose. If you do decide to customise styles and also want to allow users their choice, you’ll have to make the appropriate changes to every style template. One change you shouldn’t make is to the copyright notice on the footer of each page.

Conclusion
With little effort and no cost, you’ve installed a professional bulletin board service on your Website, regardless of the server you’re using and your level of knowledge of PHP and databases. The style of this bulletin board can be easily configured to match the look and feel of the rest of your site, so give it a try!

phpBB 3.0 Installation Guide2 – Administration Control Panel

1.3. General settings

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In this section you will learn how to change some of the basic settings of your new board.

Right after the installation you will be redirected to the so called “Administration Control Panel” (ACP). You can also access this panel by clicking the [Administration Control Panel] link at the bottom of your forum. In this interface you can change everything about your board.

1.3.1. Board Settings
The first section of the ACP you will probably want to visit right after the installation is “Board Settings”. Here you can first of all change the name (Site name) and description (Site description) of your board.

1.3. Board Settings

Here you can edit the Site name and Site description of your board.

This form also holds the options for changing things like the timezone (System timezone) as well as the date format used to render dates/times (Date format).

There you can also select a new style (after having installed it) for your board and enforce it on all members ignoring whatever style they’ve selected in their “User Control Panel”. The style will also be used for all forums where you haven’t specified a different one. For details on where to get new styles and how to install them, please visit the styles home page at phpbb.com.

If you want to use your board for a non-English community, this form also lets you change the default language (Default Language) (which can be overridden by each user in their UCPs). By default, phpBB3 only ships with the English language pack. So, before using this field, you will have to download the language pack for the language you want to use and install it. For details, please read Language packs .

1.3.2. Board Features

If you want to enable or disable some of the basic features of your board, this is the place to go. Here you can allow and disallow for example username changes (Allow Username changes) or the creation of attachments (Allow Attachments). You can even disable BBCode altogether (Allow BBCode).

1.4. Board Features

Enabling and disabling basic features with just 2 clicks

Disabling BBCode completely is a little bit to harsh for your taste but you don’t want your users to abuse the signature field for tons of images? Simply set Allow use of IMG BBCode Tag in user signatures to “No”. If you want to be a little bit more specific on what you want to allow and disallow in users’ signatures, have a look at the “Signature Settings” form.

The “Board Features” form offers you a great way to control the features in an all-or-nothing way. If you want to get into the details on each feature, there is for everything also a separated form which let’s you specify everything from the maximum number of characters allowed in a post (Max characters per post in “Post Settings”) to how large a user’s avatar can be (Maximum Avatar Dimensions in “Avatar Settings”).

Important

If you disable features, these will also be unavailable to users who would normally have them according to their respective permissions. For details on the permissions system, please read Section 1.5, “Setting permissions” or the in-depth guide in the Administrator Guide.

1.4. Creating and setting up forums
Anon

MennoniteHobbit

Forums are the sections where topics are stored. Without forums, your users would have nowhere to post! Creating forums is very easy.

Firstly, make sure you are logged in. Find the [ Administration Control Panel ] link at the bottom of the page, and click it. You should be in the Administration Index. You can administer your board here.

There are tabs at the top for the Administration Control Panel that will guide you to each category. You must get to the Forum Administration section to create a forum, so click the Forums tab.

The Forum Administration Index is where you can manage forums on your site. Along with being able to create forums, you are also able to create subforums. Subforums are forums that are located in a parent forum in a hierachy. For more information about subforums, see the administration guide on subforums.

Find the Create new forum button on the right side of the page. Type in the name of the forum you wish in the textbox located directly to the left of this button. For example, if the forum name was to be Test, in the text box put Test. Once you are done, click the Create new forum button create the forum.

You should see a page headed with the text “Create new forum :: Test”. You can change options for your forum; for example you can set what forum image the forum can use, if it’s a category, or what forum rules text will belong to the forum. You should type up a brief description for the forum as users will be able to figure out what the forum is for.

1.5. Creating a new forum

Here you can choose the name and the description of your a new forum.

The default settings are usually good enough to get your new forum up and running; however, you may change them to suit your needs. But there are three key forum settings that you should pay attention to. The Parent Forum setting allows you to choose which forum your new forum will belong to. Be careful to what level you want your forum to be in. (The Parent Forum setting is important when creating subforums. For more information on subforums, continue reading to the section on creating subforums) The “Copy Permissions” setting allows you to copy the permissions from an existing forum to your new forum. Use this if you want to keep permissions constant. The forum style setting allows you to set which style your new forum will display. Your new forum can show a different style to another. For more information on each forum setting, see the Section 3.3, “Forum Admin”

Once you’re done configuring the settings of your new forum, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Submit button to create your forum and it’s settings. If your new forum was created successfully, the screen will show you a success message.

If you wish to set permissions for the forum (or if you do not click on anything), you will see the forum permissions screen. If you do not want to (and want to use the default permissions for your new forum), click on the Back to previous page link. Otherwise, continue and set each setting to what you wish. Once you are done, click the Apply all Permissions button at the bottom of the page. You will see the successful forum permissions updated screen if it worked.

Important

If you do not set any permissions on this forum it will not be accessible to anyone (including yourself).

You have successfully updated your forum permissions and set up your new forum. To create more forums, follow this general procedure again.

.5. Setting permissions

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After you created your first forum, you have to decide who has access to it and what your users are allowed to do and what not. This is what Permissions are for. You can disallow guests to post or hand out moderating powers, for instance. Almost every aspect of user interaction with phpBB3 Olympus can be adjusted with permissions.

1.5.1. Permission types

There are four different types of permissions:

User/Group permissions (global) – e.g. disallow changing avatar

Administrator permissions (global) – e.g. allow to manage forums

Moderator permissions (global or local) – e.g. allow to lock topics or ban users (only global)

Forum permissions (local) – e.g. allow to see a forum or post topics

Each permission type consists of a different set of permissions and can apply either locally or globally. A global permission type is set for your whole bulletin board. If you disallow one of your users to send Private Messages, for instance, you have to do this with the global user permission. Administrator permission are also global.

1.6. Global and local permissions

Global and local permissions

On the other hand local permissions do only apply to specific forums. So if you disallow someone to post in one forum, for instance, it will not impact the rest of the board. The user will still be able to post in any other forum he has the local permission to post.

You can appoint moderators either globally or locally. If you trust some of your users enough, you can make them Global Moderators. They can moderate all forums they have access to with the permissions you assign to them. Compared to that, local moderators will only be able to moderate the number of forums you select for them. They can also have different moderator permissions for different forums. While they are able to delete topics in one forum, they may not be allowed to do it in another. Global moderators will have the same permissions for all forums.

1.5.2. Setting forum permissions

To set the permissions for your new forum we need the local Forum Based Permissions. First you have to decide how you want to set the permissions. If you want to set them for a single group or user, you should use the Group or User Forum Permissions. They will allow you to select one group or user, and then select the forums you want to set the permissions for.

But for this Quick Start Guide we will concentrate on the Forum Permissions. Instead of selecting a user or group, you select the forums you want to change first. You can select them either by selecting the forums manually in the top list, or by single forum and single forum plus subforums respectively in the lower pull down menus. Submit will bring you to the next page.

1.7. Select Groups

Select Groups or Users to set Forum Permissions

The Forum Permissions page shows you two columns, one for users and one for groups to select (see Figure 1.7, “Select Groups”). The top lists on both columns labelled as Manage Users and Manage Groups show users and groups that already have permissions on at least one of your selected forums set. You can select them and change their permissions with the Edit Permissions button, or use Remove Permissions to remove them which leads to them not having permissions set, and therefore not being able to see the forum or have any access to it (unless they have access to it through another group). The bottom boxes allow you to add new users or groups, that do not currently have permissions set on at least one of your selected forums.

To add permissions for groups, select one or more groups either in the Add Groups list (this works similar with users, but if you want to add new users, you have to type them in manually in the Add Users text box or use the Find a member function). Add Permissions will take you to the permission interface. Each forum you selected is listed, with the groups or users to change the permissions for below them.

There are two ways to assign permissions: You can set them manually or use predefined Permission Roles for a simpler but less powerful way. You can switch between both approaches any time you want. You can skip the manual permission introduction and jump directly into the section on “Permissions Roles”, if you are eager to get everything running as quickly as possible. But remember that permission roles do only offer a small bit of what the permission system has to offer and we believe that to be a good Olympus administrator, you have to fully grasp permissions.

Both ways only differ in the way you set them. They both share the same interface.

1.5.3. Manual permissions

This is the most important aspect of permissions. You need to understand this to properly work with them. There are three different values that a permission can take:

YES will allow a permission setting unless it is overwritten by a NEVER.

NO will be disallow a permission setting unless it is overwritten by a YES.

NEVER will completely disallow a permission setting for a user. It cannot be overwritten by a YES.

The three values are important as it is possible for a user to have more than one permissions for the same setting through multiple groups. If the user is a member of the default “Registered Users” group and a custom group called “Senior Users” you created for your most dedicated members, both could have different permissions for seeing a forum. In this example you want to make a forum called “Good old times” only available to the “Senior Users” group, but don’t want all “Registered Users” to see it. You will of course set the Can see forum permission to Yes for “Senior Users”. But do not set the permission to Never for “Registered Users”. If you do this, “Senior Members” will not see the forum as the Never overrides any Yes they have. Leave the setting at No instead. No is a weak Never that a Yes can override.

1.8. Manual permissions

Setting permissions manually

1.5.4. Permissions roles

phpBB3 Olympus ships with a number of default permission roles, that offer you a wide variety of options for setting permissions. Instead of having to check each radio button manually, you can select a predefined role in the Rolepull down list. Each role has a detailed description, that will pop up when you hover your mouse over it. Submit your changes with Apply Permissions or Apply All Permissions when you are satisfied with them. That will set the permissions and you are done.

1.9. Permission roles

Setting permissions with roles

But permission roles are not only a quick and easy way to set permissions, they are also a powerful tool for experienced board administrators to manage permissions on bigger boards. You can create your own roles and edit existing ones. Roles are dynamic, so when you edit a role, all groups and users that have the role assigned will automatically be updated.

1.5.5. Assign moderators to forums

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A quite common use case for permissions and roles are forum moderation. phpBB3 makes assigning users as moderators of forums really simple.

As you might have already guessed, moderation of specific forums is a local setting, so you can find Forum Moderators in the section for Forum Based Permissions. First of all, you will have to select for forum (or forums) you want to assign new moderators to. This form is divided into three areas. In the first one, you can select multiple forums (select multiple by holding down the CTRL button on your keyboard, or cmd (under MacOS X)), where the moderator settings you will set in the following form will only apply to these exact forums. The second area allows you to select only one forum but all the following settings will apply not only to this forum but also all its subforums. Finally, the third area’s selection will only affect exactly this forum.

After selecting the forums and hitting Submit, you will be greeted by a form you should already be familiar with from one of the previous sections in this guide: Figure 1.7, “Select Groups”. Here you can select the users or groups that should get some kind of moderation power over the selected forums. So go ahead: Select some users and/or groups and hit the Set Permissions button.

In the next form you can choose, what moderator permissions the selected users/groups should receive. First of all, there are some predefined roles from which you can select:

Standard Moderator

A Standard Moderator can approve or disapprove, edit and delete posts, delete or close reports, but not necessarily change the owner of a post. This kind of moderator can also issue warnings and view details of a post.

Simple Moderator

A Simple Moderator can edit posts and close and delete reports and can also view post details.

Queue Moderator

As a Queue Moderator, you can only approve or disapprove posts that landed in the moderator queue and edit posts.

Full Moderator

Full Moderators can do everything moderation-related; they can even ban users.

1.10. The Forum Moderator’s Permissions

Set the moderator’s permissions

When you’re done simply hit Apply all Permissions. All the permissions mentioned here can also be selected from the right side of the form to give you more granular options.

1.5.6. Setting global permissions

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Local Permissions are too local for you? Well, then phpBB3 has something to offer for you, too: Global Permissions:

Users Permissions

Groups Permissions

Administrators

Global Moderators

In “User Permissions” and “Group Permissions” you can allow and disallow features like attachments, signatures and avatars for specific users and user groups. Note that some of these settings only matter, if the respective feature is enabled in the “Board Features” (see Section 1.3.2, “Board Features” for details).

Under “Administrators” you can give users or groups administrator privileges like the ability to manage forums or change user permissions. For details on these settings please read the Section 3.7, “Permission Overload”.

The “Global Moderators” form offers you the same settings as the forum specific form (described in Section 1.5.5, “Assign moderators to forums”) but applies to all forums on your board.

1.6. Obtaining support

The phpBB Team provides many options for users to find support for their phpBB install. In addition to this very documentation, the support forum on www.phpbb.com has many answers that users like you are searching for. Therefore, we highly recommend the use of the search feature before asking a new question. If you are unable to find an answer, feel free to post a new topic asking for help. Be sure to be descriptive when explaining your problem! The more we know about what is happening, the faster we can provide you with the answer you are looking for. Be sure to fill out the Support Request Template with the information it asks for.

In addition to the support forum on www.phpbb.com, we provide a Knowledge Base for users to read and submit articles on common answers to questions. Our community has taken a lot of time in writing these articles, so be sure to check them out.

We provide realtime support in #phpBB on the popular Open Source IRC network, Freenode. You can typically find someone from each of the teams in here, as well as fellow users who are more than happy to help you out. Be sure to read the IRC rules before joining the channel, as we have a few basic netiquette rules that we ask users to follow. At any given time, there can be as many as 60 users, if not more in the channel, so you are almost certain to find someone there to help you. However, it is important that you read and follow the IRC rules as people may not answer you. An example of this is that oftentimes users come in to the channel and ask if anybody is around and then end up leaving 30 seconds later before someone has the chance to answer. Instead, be sure to ask your question and wait. As the saying goes, “don’t ask to ask, just ask!”

English is not your native language? Not a problem! We also provide an International Support page with links to various websites that provide support in Espanol, Deutsch, Francais, and more.

phpBB 3.0 Installation Guide – Steps of Installation process

phpBB 3.0 Olympus has an easy to use installation system that will guide you through the installation process.

After you have decompressed the phpBB3 archive and uploaded the files to the location where you want it to be installed, you need to enter the URL into your browser to open the installation screen. The first time you point your browser to the URL (http://www.example.com/phpBB3 for instance), phpBB will detect that it is not yet installed and automatically redirect you to the installation screen.

1.1. Introduction

The introduction page of the installation system.

1.2.1. Introduction

The installation screen gives you a short introduction into phpBB. It allows you to read the license phpBB 3.0 is released under (the General Public License) and provides information about how you can receive support. To start the installation, click the Install tab (see Figure 1.1, “Introduction”).

1.2.2. Requirements

Important

Please read the section on phpBB3’s requirements to find out more about the phpBB 3.0’s minimum requirements.

The requirements list is the first page you will see after starting the installation. phpBB 3.0 automatically checks if everything that it needs to run properly is installed on your server. In order to continue the installation, you will need to have PHP installed (the minimum version number is shown on the requirements page), and at least one database available to continue the installation. It is also important that all shown folders are available and have the correct permissions set. Please see the description of each section to find out if they are optional or required for phpBB 3.0 to run. If everything is in order, you can continue the installation by clicking the Start Install button.

1.2.3. Database settings

You now have to decide which database to use. See the Requirements section for information on which databases are supported. If you do not know your database settings, please contact your hosting company and ask for them. You will not be able to continue without them. You need:

The Database Type – the database you will be using (e.g. mySQL, SQL server, Oracle)

The Database server hostname or DSN – the address of the database server.

The Database server port – the port of the database server (most of the time this is not needed).

The Database name- the name of the database on the server.

The Database username and Database password – the login data to access the database.

Tip

If you are installing using SQLite, you should enter the full path to your database file in the DSN field and leave the username and password fields blank. For security reasons, you should make sure that the database file is not stored in a location accessible from the web.

1.2. Database settings

The database settings screen, please make sure to have all the required data available

You don’t need to change the Prefix for tables in database setting, unless you plan on using multiple phpBB installations on one database. In this case you can use a different prefix for each installation to make it work.

After you have entered your details, you can continue by clicking the Proceed to next step button. Now, phpBB 3.0 will test and verify the data you entered.

If you see a “Could not connect to the database” error, this means that you didn’t enter the database data correctly and it is not possible for phpBB to connect. Make sure that everything you entered is in order and try again. Again, if you are unsure about your database settings, please contact your host.

Tip

Remember that your database username and password are case sensitive. You must use the exact one you have set up or been given by your host

If you installed another version of phpBB before on the same database with the same prefix, phpBB will inform you and you just need to enter a different database prefix.

If you see the Successful Connection message, you can continue to the next step.

1.2.4. Administrator details

Now you have to create your administration user. This user will have full administration access and he will be the first user on your forum. All fields on this page are required. You can also set the default language of your forum on this page. In a vanilla (basic) phpBB 3.0 installation we only include English [GB]. You can download further languages from www.phpbb.com, and add them later.

1.2.5. Configuration file

In this step, phpBB will automatically try to write the configuration file. The forum needs the configuration to run properly. It contains all of the database settings, so without it, phpBB will not be able to access the database.

Usually, automatically writing the configuration file works fine. But in some cases it can fail due to wrong file permissions, for instance. In this case, you need to upload the file manually. phpBB asks you to download the config.php file and tells you what to do with it. Please read the instructions carefully. After you have uploaded the file, click Done to get to the last step. If Done returns you to the same page as before, and does not return a success message, you did not upload the file correctly.

1.2.6. Advanced settings
The Advanced settings allow you to set some parameters of the board configuration. They are optional, and you can always change them later if you wish. So if you are unsure of what these settings mean, ignore them and proceed to the final step to finish the installation.

If the installation was successful, you can now use the Login button to visit the Administration Control Panel. Congratulations, you have installed phpBB 3.0 successfully. But there is still a lot of work ahead!

If you are unable to get phpBB 3.0 installed even after reading this guide, please look at the support section to find out where you can ask for further assistance.

At this point if you are upgrading from phpBB 2.0, you should refer to the upgrade guide for further information. If not, you should remove the install directory from your server as you will only be able to access the Administration Control Panel whilst it is present.

Build a phpBB Forum in 5 Steps

If you’re thinking of setting up a forum for your Website, you need not start from scratch. The open-source script, phpBB, can easily be installed on most Web servers. This article will describe how to do it right, from downloading through to customisation.
To use this tutorial, you need not know anything about PHP, and need only have had minimum experience with databases.

Introduction to phpBB

phpBB is a stable, open-source, bulletin board script available as a free download from phpbb.com. It allows you to set up an unlimited number of forums and categories. Users, moderators and user groups with varying permissions can be created. In short, it provides everything you’d expect of a bulletin board service. For a complete list of all supported features, see phpbb.com/features.

This software can easily be installed using FTP and a browser. It will run on any PHP-enabled server and requires any one of the following databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL or Access via ODBC.

It doesn’t matter whether your server is running IIS or Apache, though setup tends to be simpler on an Apache Web server. Any Website administrator should be able to install and configure phpBB in a minimum amount of time.

The administrator’s interface allows for ongoing maintenance, so that styles can be changed and topics added or removed. In fact, any administrative duties can be easily performed.

The installation instructions provided at the phpBB site are clear and straightforward. This article does not attempt to replace those instructions but to supplement them and to assist site administrators who are not familiar with PHP. It will help you determine whether you can run phpBB on your server, and if so, how to upload, install and configure it.

System Requirements

As phpBB is written using the server-side scripting language PHP, you need to know whether your Web server supports this language.
If you don’t know the answer to this question, you can always ask your Web host, or upload the following script to your server.

<?php

phpinfo();

?>

Use any text editor to create this file and save it as info.php. The actual name of the file is not as important as the extension, .php. In text mode, upload this file to the root directory on your server. View it by typing the address into your browser.
If your server does not support PHP, all you will see are the three lines of code shown above. In this case, get in touch with your Web host and see if PHP can be enabled for your domain.

If PHP is installed, the configuration settings of PHP will be displayed. Assuming that you have PHP enabled on your server, the info.php file will also be useful to help determine if you have the database support needed by phpBB.

Confirming database support for phpBB varies slightly depending upon the Web server you’re running. Let’s first look at Web servers that use Apache.

Apache/Linux

Most versions of PHP on Apache are compiled with support for MySQL databases. You can confirm this by looking again at the “info.php” file. The third line of this file should be the Configure Command. In this line, look for the words with-mysql.
PostgreSQL is not as widely supported, but you should be able to discover whether your server supports it in exactly the same way, but instead, looking for with-pgsql.

IIS/Windows

There will be no Configure Command available when PHP is run on a Windows platform, so we’ll take a slightly different approach to confirm database support here. Again viewing the info.php file, choose Find from your browser’s menu options and search for your database type.

For instance, if we searched for mssql to confirm support for MS SQL Server, we should see something similar to the text below:

In the same way, you can test for PostgreSQL using the search string pgsql, for MySQL using mysql, and for ODBC support using odbc.
Use the info.php file to determine which version of the database you have. You’ll need to know this when we begin the installation, and, with database and PHP support confirmed, we can now begin that process.

Upload The phpBB Files

Assuming you’ve downloaded and decompressed the files for phpBB, everything you need to upload should be in the directory called phpBB2. The only real requirement is that the directory structure be preserved.

Use your favourite FTP program to upload the files to your server. Make sure that all non-graphic files are transferred in ASCII mode. Most FTP programmes will do this automatically for you, based on the file extensions. Make sure your software is configured to transfer all files with the extensions .php, .tpl, .inc, .htm and .cfg as text files.

After the upload is complete, change the permissions on the config.php file so that they’re writeable by all. If you don’t know how to do this, don’t worry about it. The program will give you the option of saving a new config.php file and then overwriting the original.

Prepare for Installation

In preparation for setting up phpBB on your server, you’ll need the following information:

• Database Server Hostname/DSN

• Database Name

• Database Username

• Database Password

• Admin Email Address

Let’s discuss this information before we proceed. The host name will be the domain name at which your database is hosted. If your database is hosted on the same server as your Web server, all you need enter here is localhost. If it resides on another server, you can enter the appropriate domain name or the IP address. If instead you’re using ODBC to connect, you will need the connection name. If you are unsure about your situation, clarify the specifics with your Web host.

The database name is, quite simply, the name of the database you’re planning to use. You may use an existing database or create a new one. To create a new database, you may again need to speak with your Web host. If you’re using MySQL with phpMyAdmin, then it’s a relatively simple matter. If you’re using an existing database, table names will be created with a distinctive prefix so that the phpBB tables are readily identifiable.

The username and password need no explanation. The admin email is the email address to which you want questions relating to your bulletin board to be sent.

Installation

With all the information at hand, installation is as simple as pointing your browser towards the install.php file. If you uploaded the directory phpBB2 and its contents to the root directory of your server, the path you need is http://www./phpBB2/install/install.php.

Fill in the text boxes and press the Start Install button. Within seconds you should be finished — installation really is that simple. All the necessary database tables have been created for you. If you wish, have a look at them. There should be a total of 29 new tables — and we haven’t even had to think about SQL!

Shut down your browser, and don’t forget to delete the directories called contrib and install. phpBB won’t run until you do so. If, during the installation, you were asked to download the “config.php” file, you must now upload it to the phpBB2 directory, overwriting the existing file.

Administer Your Forum

To administer your Bulletin Board open http://www./phpBB2/index.php in your browser, and log in with the administrator name and password that you specified on installation. Then, click the Go to Administration Panel link at the bottom of the page. You’ll probably want to go to Forum Admin > Management first, to set up a new forum and categories.

Styles Admin is probably the next area you’ll want to look at, but before you do, go to the phpBB site and see what other styles you might like to download. Upon installation, the phpBB default style, subSilver, is the only one available, but any number of styles may be installed.

After downloading them from the phpBB site, you need to upload your new styles to the Templates directory, which is directly below the phpBB2 directory. After this, new styles must be installed from the Administration panel by going to Styles Admin > Add.
Once you’ve found a theme you like, you can further customise it from the administration panel by choosing Style Admin > Management > Edit. You can associate a theme with an entirely new Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), or you can edit the existing one.

Customise Your Forum

Once you’ve settled on a style, you will doubtless want to further customise it in ways that aren’t available through the Administration panel. For instance, you might want to display your own logo, rather than the phpBB logo.
If you have some knowledge of HTML, minor changes like this are not too difficult. Any changes you wish to make to the appearance of the header can be addressed by making changes to the file called overall_header.tpl. Since this file is included for every page within a style, your changes will take effect throughout the whole bulletin board.

Some other changes can be relatively easy to make. For instance, if it doesn’t make sense to have user groups, the appropriate code can simply be commented out of the overall_header.tpl file.

Be aware that phpBB allows users to choose their own styles, so, unless you choose to override the user’s choice of style from the general configuration menu, any installed templates will be available for users to choose. If you do decide to customise styles and also want to allow users their choice, you’ll have to make the appropriate changes to every style template. One change you shouldn’t make is to the copyright notice on the footer of each page.

Conclusion

With little effort and no cost, you’ve installed a professional bulletin board service on your Website, regardless of the server you’re using and your level of knowledge of PHP and databases. The style of this bulletin board can be easily configured to match the look and feel of the rest of your site, so give it a try!